Items Heroes are upgradeable and customizable in more ways than just through leveling up their skills.
Items can be bought from The Concordat and equipped on hero units—up to 6 items at a time. Each item comes from a path and rare items of a path can only be purchased after unlocking the appropriate research.
Unlike in Gladius, items can be bought from anywhere and transferred to a hero on the next turn. One-use items have categorically been replaced with cooldown-based items.
The Concordat
Everyone knew The Concordat. But no-one knew who they were. Maybe survivors on the surface, maybe a ZEPHON-fork, maybe an old Corp reaching outta the 20th century’s grave. They fed the rumor mill, hiding their truth under the chatter. All we did know was that they traded everything to everyone—and that they never made a loss.
Trauma Kit
Our medics… well, they were amateurs. But they’d survived and they patched you up just enough to get back into the field. The Concordat’s kits, though, they were… something else. The best of the old world mixed with whatever the AIs and aliens knew. They called it a “trauma kit”, but the real trauma was seeing that *thing* open you up and put you back together. If you could forget it, worth every cent.
Common item. Restore 33% hitpoints. Free action. Cooldown 10.
Rare Human items are unlocked for purchase from The Concordat by researching The Golden Pass.
Acrin Bone Whistle
“At kirk, or at market, whene'er ye meet me, Gang by me as tho' that ye car'd na a flie; But steal me a blink o' your bonie black e'e, Yet look as ye were na lookin' to me, Yet look as ye were na lookin' to me. O whistle an' I'll come, &c.” — Robert Burns
Uncommon item. Summon a Dark Vassael for 3 turns. Free action. Cooldown 10.
Rare Voice items are unlocked for purchase from The Concordat by researching Amoetia's Embrace.
Pathcutter
A wide-beam AI array, mounted on a prototype drone. Useless for combat, as it takes an hour to warm up. You set it up, point it where you want to go, and flip the safety off. Then cover your ears to its howl and follow. It finds impossibly perfect way through the most tangled jungle, plant or urban, paths you can never find again.
Rare item. Gain +3 movement and ignore movement penalties of forests and ruins for 1 turn. Free action. Cooldown 5.
Rare Cyber items are unlocked for purchase from The Concordat by researching Ha'sharet Exchange.
What do you think of the new item mechanics?
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Heroes in ZEPHON are rare, powerful units that can manifest extraordinary abilities to vanquish their foes or protect their allies. They can equip items and increase the strength of their special abilities as they level up.
There are a total of six heroes, with two available from following each path—an early hero and a large mid-game hero. Unlike our previous game Warhammer 40,000: Gladius, these units are produced in the headquarters available to each city from the start instead of a special building.
One of our six heroes follows.
Erelim Assassin
This creation looks to have been inspired by Dick's Second Variety—just a normal looking human, until it gets near enough then everything just unfolds into blades upon blades upon blades.
The initial hero of the Cybernetica path. A synthetic machine designed for deceit and murder. Its combination of advanced technology, superior agility and precision enables it to infiltrate enemy lines and assassinate targets at will. Although innocent-looking, peering behind the mask reveals a mechanical monstrosity with blades sheathed inside synthetic skin. Being at the other end of these blades is fatal for anyone who is unlucky enough to be poorly armored. If the first strike does not end you, a critical thrust at your weak points will.
Traits: Agile: Not slowed by forests or ruins. Hero: Category. Mechanical: Category. Stealth: Does not provoke overwatch attacks. Performs overwatch attacks with melee weapons.
Levelable Abilities: Assassinate: Inflict a critical strike on an injured unit. On kill, enemy units lose additional morale. Ghost Walk: Ignore zone of control restrictions and walk through enemies. Evasion Processor: Temporarily reduces incoming damage. Dance of the Erelim (Elite): Damage all adjacent enemies.
Cost: 24 Minerals, 24 Chips, 48 Influence
Upkeep: 2 Minerals, 2 Influence
What do you think of the Erelim Assassin?
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Quests High replayability and an immersive world are two key aspects for us in ZEPHON. Quests directly enhance both.
All but one final quest will semi-randomly occur during a playthrough. At predetermined time intervals, your chosen leader and your actions in the world—anything from your discoveries, communications, combat or economy—will determine which quest triggers.
At the core of each quest is a large illustration with custom ambient audio and meaningful player choices. Some choices may have an immediate consequence, but many will chain into further tasks.
Choices Choices will reflect on the world, units and features on the map, your leader traits or what you can subsequently do and how you can interact with others. A number of choices will be locked behind special conditions, come with a cost, or be based on reputation as in other classic role-playing games.
To enforce the survival aspect, replayability and atmosphere, results won’t be shown until a choice is made. Choices also come with a risk of failure. Surviving in the world of ZEPHON is hard—no victory is guaranteed…
The Dream
Design Commentary You have a weird dream. Grotesque beings are feasting on your soul. What does it mean? Is it a warning? Or are the demons of your past coming for revenge? You can't explain it yourself and no one around you has a meaningful answer.
The ask options only appear if you've met the corresponding leader. And the “Ask your sisters” option is exclusive to when you’re playing as the Furtive Tribunal.
A prime example of interacting with other NPC leaders of the world and getting answers based on who they are. The Fluid Anchorite might teach you how to handle your mind with more prowess. Otherwise ZEPHON might be able to decrypt the enigma. But if these polemicizing NPCs aren’t to your taste, asking the manic Hesitant Reaver is bound to help… somehow… surely?
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ZEPHON Cinematic Intro Trailer
Get a peek at the story for ZEPHON in this cinematic intro trailer for the upcoming 4X strategy game from the creators of Warhammer 40,000: Gladius.
Smash the like button! For mankind.
Proxy AMA #3 Recording
4X Game Development, ZEPHON, Warhammer 40,000: Gladius | Proxy AMA #3
Wishlist and follow it to be notified of betas and release dates! Thanks for everyone that tuned in and asked questions. For everyone else, enjoy the recording.
Data Modding ZEPHON will continue Gladius’ tradition of easy and accessible modding. All locally installed game files are stored unencrypted so players can inspect the gameplay data, rebalance stats, change graphics and sounds, modify the UI, add new units and much more. Throughout development we put heavy emphasis on using standard, open file formats. Open formats are easier to inspect, understand and build on top of. Working with them is less expensive than paying for proprietary formats. And best of all, it’s more inclusive for modders, who can use a variety of tools to create or modify assets. Where there are no available open formats, we’ll make sure to supply conversion scripts and tools to interact with our custom formats. The cornerstone of ZEPHON modding is data-driven XML configuration files. They define gameplay stats, actions, traits, effects and conditions in a way that is easy to understand and change. We’ve seen this being used to great success, and we have a couple of enhancements in store.
AI Modding In Gladius it was only possible to mod the AI through XML in a few limited ways: faction resource pooling weights, research and production scores, and hero ability level up priorities.
A critical missing ingredient was the capability to change how and when the AI uses leader and unit abilities. This can now be modded in XML by specifying `` inside an action:
```
```
This would make the AI only use the healing action “MendMatter” on units that have less than 50% hitpoints.
We will be using the same system to implement the AI that comes with the game—making the behavior easy to modify and improve. We’re aiming to have as much of the AI be XML data-driven as possible so that it’s available for you to tweak.
Action Blueprints Modding actions has overall been enhanced, streamlined and simplified.
Previously it was necessary to reuse action tags because they were tightly coupled with the visualization. It wasn’t possible to have a new action and have a new visualization for it. This is possible in ZEPHON by using the new `` or `` actions and specifying the visual blueprints:
Actions can now also be specified in blueprints, so that the same action only has to be written once…
```Data/World/Blueprints/Actions/ClearTile.xml:
```
…and reused across many units or buildings.
```Data/World/Buildings/Construction.xml:
```
Faction Modding To enhance modability and implementation with ZEPHON’s leader-focused mechanics, there are a few improvements to faction modding.
We can now specify `` and `` inside faction XMLs and they will be available to buildings and units that meet the conditions whenever that faction leader is played. This makes it possible for a single leader to have additional production options or unit abilities without having to duplicate buildings or units.
Diplomacy will be covered in greater detail in a subsequent reveal, but specifying which labels a faction leader likes and dislikes will be the primary driver of AI behavior on the diplomatic level. This can be done through `` and `` tags in the faction XMLs.
All of this, and more, will be integrated with Steam Workshop on release.
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Proxy AMA #3 February 23rd @ 18:00 CET
February 23rd @ 18:00 CET we will be running a 60 minute live AMA on Discord.
You are very welcome to join us, to hang out and ask any questions you may have. About ZEPHON, Warhammer 40,000: Gladius, game development in general or anything else.
If you can't make it, or would like to ask your question ahead of time, please use the #ama-questions channel.
Please note that the AMA will be recorded. We'll be sending it to our newsletter subscribers after the event, so you’ll be able to listen to it at a later date if you aren't available at the time of the AMA: https://newsletter.proxy-studios.com/.
You can listen to the previous AMA on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79gDK3u9Kqw
From the literal use of ‘grimdark’ to the fact that the environments (if not the units) look like they’ve been inspired by the terrain of Gladius, is Zephon some kind of vision of your previous game freed from the shackles of a restrictive license?
While we are big fans of the Warhammer universe, it is definitely refreshing and complementing to work on something in parallel where we have full creative freedom. In Gladius, you build up your war machinery and battle it out with all the amazing units and factions of the 40K universe. ZEPHON is more involved: you will struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, manage a more sophisticated economy, negotiate with others leaders, traverse a vast research tree, make complex ethical choices and, of course, go to war with rivals by utilizing a sophisticated mix of three distinct technological paths (conventional troops, cold-hearted machines, and eldritch horrors). A new IP allows us to express all the ideas that we’ve been accumulating over the last 6 years.
Proxy wants to go it alone with this one—any particular reason? You’ve historically partnered with Slitherine before now but there are plenty of self-publishing successes out there as well.
ZEPHON is co-funded by the Creative Europe MEDIA program of the European Union, so from a financial point of view there is no need for a publisher. We might decide to team up closer to release for marketing purposes, but we want to engage with players directly and react to their feedback with new game versions in a matter of minutes—which people are loving on our Discord.
“Let’s face it, 4X combat is often boring or shallow”—It’d be remiss of me to not want to explore this further—how does Zephon solve this proposed problem with 4X combat?
4X games often give combat the back seat. It’s not necessarily an issue, but it’s a question of focus. We feel that these games, after the economic infrastructure is created, most of the time end up being decided by combat anyway. We can do the whole experience more justice by going beyond simplistic combat. That’s done primarily by giving each unit a very distinct role through unique weapons, skills and upgrades. We’ve been inspired to bring RTS elements into 4X combat and believe it works excellently.
Considering Proxy has spent a lot time recently making a game that’s been famously devoid of any kind of diplomacy (there is only war in the grimdark, after all), how do you plan on shaking up those mechanics specifically with Zephon?
With ZEPHON we really want to emphasize the roleplay aspects when you talk to other leaders. So in order to feel as immersive and interactive as possible, they will react pronouncedly to actions you perform or choices you have made in the past. You will be able to influence leaders to perform any diplomatic action on third parties, and all leaders will have fully unique dialogue lines to bring their respective character traits to life. It’s important to us that none of this detracts from the combat experience, but rather augments it. Being able to decide with who you’re at war will ultimately give you more control over the combat than a free for all.
Your steam page also mentions shaking up other 4X foundations as well—what other innovations are you proud of?
Some are still in the experimental design stage, but two important foundations that we can mention now can be split into gameplay and visual. Gameplay-wise, we’re doing an involved economic model where resources combine to create more powerful resources (think Settlers or a simpler Factorio), but also where you pay for production ahead of time instead of your resources ticking down each turn. That means you’ll have to think about your build orders and resource allocation ahead of time if you want to play optimally. On the visual aspect, we’ve recently been seeing an influx of 4X games that try to appeal to a large mass with casual graphics. We want to go into the other direction, be more realistic and show the gritty and the dark. On top of that we are going to uniquely model every unit upgrade and also every distinct type of building in your city--so you know what kind of city it is just from looking at it.
From Pandora, to Gladius, and now your work on Zephon, what do you think is Proxy’s defining or enduring legacy on 4X strategy games?
The relentless pursuit of creating a great combat experience. And we’re doubling down on it by making it more visceral and immersive.
If you enjoyed reading this, help us out and tell your friends to wishlist ZEPHON—it's the only way we can encourage Steam to show ZEPHON to more people.
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Alongside the player leaders emerging into the ruined world at the start of the game, there are threats and factions already on the map.
Many such presences are led by a non-player character--unique leaders with special units and abilities that cannot be chosen by players.
These NPCs are a key element of our world and story. They control territory with emplacements and patrol routes. Players can interact with them through quests, diplomacy or outright attack them.
Getting these leaders on your side provides a welcome buffer while you struggle to survive. In the final push for victory, they might not have to be eliminated.
One of three NPC leaders follows.
ZEPHON-3
“ZEPHON is [your ally, your enemy]. ZEPHON is [ignorant, omniscient]. ZEPHON is [one, many], ZEPHON is [perfect, abomination]. ZEPHON is [blessed, cursed]. ZEPHON is [zen, hop]. ZEPHON is [coming, going]. ZEPHON is [transcendent, grounded]. ZEPHON is [thoughtware, meatware]. ZEPHON is [ZEPHON is [ZEPHON is [ZEPHON is-]]]. ZEPHON is [inside your systems].”
Mechanics
ZEPHON-3 has self-evolved and defended the Earth from the Acrin apocalypse. Today, it’s in pieces, but it is still more than a simple threat to unsuspecting players.
If you want to stop it recovering, you’ll need to prevent it from reconnecting its server farms and manufacturing facilities. But this will subject you to hacking attacks and other cybernetic assaults.
To enforce ZEPHON-3’s will on the ground, its makeshift Wardens roam the lands, protecting the key computational infrastructure, though they rarely mount attacks.
These large robots wield a giant circular saw, a homemade flamethrower and a fast-firing missile pod. Worst of all, they’ve been imbued with unknown ZEPHON tech, letting them cannibalize other machines to heal.
Wardens don’t make it easy to pass through territory that ZEPHON-3 has been determined to be critical.
Themes: Fragmentation, The Chinese Room, Evolved-to-Survive. Tarot Theme: The World.
Likes: Co-operation, Mechanisation. Dislikes: Biology, Acrin. Tendency: Towards Itself.
All-seeing circular shapes with blue and purple high-tech tints. ZEPHON is the AI, possibly is all AI.
What do you think of the ZEPHON-3, the NPC leader?
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The faction leader chosen at the start of the game is the character you play as, performing diplomatic actions, influencing your population, issuing building construction and giving military orders.
Each leader has a unique set of personality traits and mechanical differences that break the standard flow of the game--one leader may only ever control a single settlement while another may make a combat unit temporarily invulnerable.
Leader personality traits like scavenger, outsider, immoral or honor-bound grant additional powers, or passive bonuses or maluses. Moreover, choices made in response to events result in new traits being acquired over the course of the game. Other leaders will treat you differently based on how much your traits align or differ.
The leader you choose will determine the look of your capital and the logos that appear on large units, buildings and flags as well as the UI.
While it is not advised to have duplicate leaders, for players that wish to break through that level of immersion, there will be a setting for it. As a bonus we’re also looking to add a few special references when a leader interacts with their “duplicate”.
One of eight playable leaders available in ZEPHON follows.
Furtive Tribunal
“Bright stars shine so sweet—but bright stars die first. In the long tomb, ослепленный, we felt the aria of the dark stars, who live forever. Now our only taste is for their harmonies.”
Biography
Before the Earth died, the Tribunal were three people—not quite the mother, crone and maiden of poetic lore, but three people of differing backgrounds and beliefs. They barely knew each other and little liked what they knew.
As the sky fell, the three entered the apocalypse bunker amongst their families, their friends, a small nation of loved ones.
Only these three emerged, stained and blind.
Of the three, only one ever talks. Of the bunker, they never talk. For the three, only one vision now prevails of a darkness that holds truth, an imprecise set of virtues that others damn as mysticism.
The three’s certainty—their strange knowledge—attracts followers who need leaders, leaders who will lead, however arbitrary the rules they govern by. Once again, they are a nation.
Mechanics
The Furtive Tribunal has four unique mechanics. The first three are in effect from the start of the game while the elite mechanic is unlocked through a research upgrade. Each mechanic also has unique research upgrades that either make it stronger or more viable in different circumstances.
Dark Omen: The Furtive Tribunal’s connection with the darkness allows them to see past what normal mortals see. Enemy units near your cities are revealed even when out of regular sight range.
Whispers of the Voice: Spend influence to capture whispers of the future and accelerate research.
Mysticism: The Three believe that spiritual apprehension precedes intellect, which does not aid in the scientific study of their faction. Research Laboratories have decreased output.
The Outsider (Elite): The quintessence of communion with the Voice--the ability to summon a terrifying Voice unit from beyond this world.
Design Commentary
The Furtive Tribunal was conceived from the tarot card of The High Priestess. The rule of three and hidden knowledge were their initial thematic focus.
For this leader illustration we have three Russian women enveloped by complete darkness, interacting with each other silently, while the central one addresses the viewer. All three wear very similar, mysterious cloaks, but each has a distinct hair style to represent a part of a whole. Only the central figure ever speaks, but they are all blind.
What do you think of the Furtive Tribunal??
If you enjoyed reading this, help us out and tell your friends to wishlist ZEPHON—it's the only way we can encourage Steam to show ZEPHON to more people.
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